Like a wind-harried raven, I trembled.

My leaves danced like snow around me.

My skeletal branches bleached-white like bone, clattered angrily together.

I had thought I would remain even when everything else disappeared,

As eternal as the amaranth blossoms that bloomed at my feet.

My companions left me slowly, one by one, leaving on silent cat’s paws,

Disappearing like shadows into the night.

Our roots remained entwined in a lover’s embrace, and like Juliet, it seemed I must follow.

Yet still I wished to stay, and let the warm sun caress my bone-white branches and tease the peeling bark of my trunk.

Slowly, noiselessly, my core rotted away, and creatures began to nest in me.

I did not mind the small creatures and their raucous noise,

So, I remained for just a little longer.

The end came swiftly, and I fell, rudely ripped from the numb fingers of my departed lovers.

I felt the sharp sting of the ax, and a strong voice disrupted the silence.

Calloused hands lifted my severed trunk in sections and carried me away to where the wagon stood waiting.

What was left of my tattered bark was stripped away in ribbons.

Rough hands caressed my weather-smoothed skin and praised my hollowness.

The hiss of the rasp, the rasp of the saw, echoed within me as they shaped my hollowness.

New, strange wood was added to me, fitted in a new kind of embrace to my sides,

An embrace made of joints and glue, with which the carpenter transfigured me.

Pleased with his work, the carpenter carried me away

Through the doorway of a house where amaranth bloomed at the threshold.

A soft voice trilled in delight as I was presented to her, and soft hands glided over my glossy

skin, praising me.

Gently, a tiny bundle was placed within me, filling my hollowness.

A miniature hand touched me, warming me, setting my spirit aglow.

Slowly, surely, I began to rock, like a young sapling in a breeze,

Lulling my precious cargo off to sleep.

And so, I remain, transfigured though I am, under the sunlight that streams through a window,